New build, no boot - 1/2 second power flash then nothing

[IMOG]

System in sig. Please feel free to offer any advice you may have.

 

This is my problem:

I turn on PSU, DRAM LED and standby LED are lit, press the power button, Diagnostic LED's light for fraction of a second, fans spin up for 1/2 second, DRAM LED goes out, standby LED stays lit.

 

These are the details for the first questions you might think of:

All 4 mobo power connectors are connected. Otherwise, there is only power to CPU Fan, HDD, Video card (by molex connection). There are no other accessories in any expansion slots or connections to mobo.

 

The CPU fan is two wire, it does not do RPM sensing (not sure if board is automatically shutting down because no CPU fan is detected).

 

I have tried using no mobo fan headers, as I read in these forums that this occasionally solves issues. It had no effect for me.

[IMOG]

Preliminary update:

I should have mentioned I'm using an xp-90 HS. I left it attached, however I grabbed the retail HSF which came with the X2 and plugged it into the CPU fan header... without any drives connected, no keyboard or mouse, no monitor.

 

The result was that everything that was connected powered up and ran normally... If I had to guess right now I would say that the CPU fan header does indeed need RPM feedback from the fan (as the stock AMD HSF does).

 

I'm going to go ahead and connect the rest of the stuff back up and I will update. Once I have a resolution, I will update the thread starting post also, so at the very least this might be helpful to someone else. FYI, I did look over the quick start and the User manual, but I didn't see anything about RPM sensing being mandatory on the CPU fan header.

[Angry_Games]

make sure you give this a read too:

 

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20832

 

the cpu fan header doesn't have to have anything attached to function (ie the board will run without a fan/rpm sensing on this header)

[yellowfever]

Hi everyone, this is my first post and I have a similar problem. My components are in my sig. I followed the build guide to the T, the two amber lihts come on, but when I boot the fans turn on for a split secon and stop. All 4 red indicator lights comeon, so I know the components are identified by the board. I cleared the CMOS a few times, each time increasing the duration (last time was for 2 days).

I assume I'll have to RMA the board. A friend of mine said it sounded like a capacito problem, but I don't know.

[RGone]

2x512 ADATA Vitesta ddr533 (hynix)

Has been known to cause no boot. The boards in general hate Hynix especially if you cannot boot it to make any bios adjustments. But go on and rma the board to the vendor and when you get another back then you know it is your stuff that the boards don't like and have one suspect problem out of the way.

 

RGone...

 

Hi everyone, this is my first post and I have a similar problem. My components are in my sig. I followed the build guide to the T, the two amber lihts come on, but when I boot the fans turn on for a split secon and stop. All 4 red indicator lights comeon, so I know the components are identified by the board. I cleared the CMOS a few times, each time increasing the duration (last time was for 2 days).

I assume I'll have to RMA the board. A friend of mine said it sounded like a capacito problem, but I don't know.

[IMOG]

Well ultimately I was able to get it to boot with all components connected - Everything that was connected before is now connected, plus 3 more of my hard drives and the PATA RAID controller that connects two of them, along with my other GB of RAM.

 

I was very careful about how I was making changes and testing... and my only comment is "flaky". For example, I had just the 4 power connections to the mobo, the video card, 1 HDD connected, and one dimm in the orange slot furthest from CPU, and it started up fine half the time. I would press the power button, connect the dvdrw, and no boot again regardless of what I'd do, same symptoms as described in original post.

 

The only thing I've changed between then and now, is how I connected the power cables (which leads I used for what), and messing with the wires connected to the CPU and Fan2 headers. While I was connecting everything, I'd plug in one more device, then test. Almost every time I'd get the same no boot when I hit the power button... I'd cut the power on the PSU, turn it back on, press the onboard power button again a few times, then it would work suddenly.

 

I'll blame it on the fan wires I had to splice together I guess... Maybe they were shorting or otherwise messing up. Now that everything is connected, it restarts without issue every time, and my voltages look great, as do temps.

 

I also just blindly increased the CPU freqency with a slight voltage bump for curiosities sake and got another couple hundred mhz out of the A64x2. Time to dig into the BIOS and really see what it can do.

 

So ya, I'm happy with the board features... But I wish I had a setting wrong or did something else incorrect that I could really pinpoint, because the startup thing is just flaky. Still very excited to get into configuring the board more, and thanks for the suggestions.